I Had (another) Dream

I don't know whether it is a result of lockdown or because of some other strange cause, but recently my nights have been filled with some rather vivid dreams. It certainly makes going to bed each night a bit more exciting, since I don't know where my dreams will transport me before I wake up in the morning.

Last night I had another memorable dream. I think I was returning from some sort of boat trip and, as I approached the wharf, I could hear people on the shore loudly celebrating. The church bells were peeling and people were crowding the streets and cheering. When I asked what the cause for the celebration was, I was told it was because "there is now a vaccine". In my dream the celebrations seemed as animated and joyful as the newsreel footage of people celebrating in the streets at the end of WW2.

It is true that there has been a lot of media coverage about the possibility of a vaccine becoming available in the next few months. Some of this publicity has been encouraging and others have been rather negative. A recent report came out that told us that the trials of the Oxford vaccine have been halted because one recipient had an adverse reaction. That was certainly a disappointment as the Oxford vaccine seemed to be the most favoured of the 160 or so candidates that are in development around the world.

Over the next couple of days the story was refined a little to tell us that the reaction was not particularly serious, and that it was only one person out of thousands of people who had now received the vaccine. Apparently the trial will resume soon.

There is no doubt that we are all holding out for the arrival of a successful vaccine. It is now six months since the pandemic broke upon our world and so much has changed in that time. We are separated from our families and friends, we cannot venture more than 5 km from our homes and we live in daily fear of catching the disease. All travel has just about completely stopped. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs and businesses are struggling to survive. We all hope that a vaccine will quickly restore so many of these things that we are now missing.

But will we dance in the streets if a vaccine works ? Was my dream a prophetic forecast of a medical breakthrough ? I really hope so.

In the meantime, life in lockdown continues at its suffocatingly slow pace. At least this morning we had the welcome arrival of the Woolworths home deliveries. We now have new supplies of tomato sauce, toilet paper, milk, butter and milk. It's always a cause for some celebration, but maybe not quite enough justification for dancing in the street and sounding the church bells.

The Weather Bureau has been warning us that this weekend will be very wet. We might even get a month's worth of rain in the space of a few hours. That is hardly cause for celebration.

So what else has been happening in the past few days ? The daily release of new COVID numbers suggests that the trend is heading downwards, although not as rapidly as we would have liked. Today's tally was released a short time ago and it stood at 41. It needs to drop a lot more before we can move to the next stage of easing of restrictions.

Christmas is only a little over 3 months away. It may be a vastly different Christmas to the ones we were used to. A couple of days ago Myer announced that, for the first time in decades, there will be no Christmas displays in their windows this year. It was just another reminder of how this year is unlike any other.Read more